Wednesday, 13 August 2014

Tabloids prove – yet again – that they won't learn

Here’s a
thing: what will be the tipping point that means that the UK press faces
regulation – however much it doesn’t want it?

The
mainstream media has, thus far, managed to squirm out of any form of
independent regulation, following the Leveson Inquiry.

And that
bit about “independent” is important: no matter what some papers claimed, there
was no plan for what the press publish to be subject to the machinations of politicians.

To remind
ourselves: Leveson followed revelations about widespread phone-hacking – which, it is increasingly clear, did not just happen at the Rupert Murdoch-owned News of the World, although there was an industrial amount of hacking there. The Mirror group is now in the spotlight too.

In an
interesting little side note, it seems that four members of staff on the Mail on Sunday were told by the police
in 2006 that their phones had been hacked by the NotW, but bosses at the Mail group decided to keep it secret –
and they didn’t bother to mention it in evidence to Leveson either.

Mail on Sunday editor at the time, Peter Wright, has
been a member of the Press Complaints Commission (PCC) since 2008, taking over the position previously
held by Mail editor in chief, Paul
Dacre, from 1999-2008.

During that
time, the PCC issued two reports on hacking, in essence backing up the version
of events from News International that it hadn’t happened often and that it was
all just the work of a “rogue reporter”.

Somewhat
unsurprisingly, though, Wright and Dacre have subsequently succumbed to amnesia over the entire
business of the hacking of their members of staff’s phones.

Mind you, amnesia, ignorance or straightforward
incompetence seem to be the defence de rigueur of senior newspaper folk when it
comes to such matters.

After all, her admitted total lack of knowledge of
anything that went on in Rebekah Brooks’s newsrooms was accepted as a defence
by the court in the recent hacking trial, while News International godfather,
Murdoch himself, has been known to be remarkably vague when being questioned
over the affair.

It says something for the confidence many of these
people have in their power over government that the revelations have not
noticeably improved the behavior of the tabloid media in particular.

Not that it’s the tabloids alone: Murdoch’s Times – which used to be the paper of
record – has plummeted so far since he bought it that it’s current idea of
political ‘debate’ is to call the leader of the opposition “weird”.

Such an approach, by nobody’s definition, can be
remotely positive for the public discourse.

But for the sake of this article, let’s stick with the
tabloids.

It’s not so long ago that several papers revealed
themselves entirely happy to splash pictures on their front pages of the moment
that Mick Jagger was told that his partner had taken her own life.

But a glance at this morning’s tabloids reveals a
general approach that blithely ignores basic humanity, together with any idea
of journalistic ethics (yes, they do exist).

The subject is the death of Hollywood star Robin
Williams, who died by suicide.

The front pages alone seem to be competing to see who
can publish the most details.

In the rush for sales, editors have chosen to deliberately
ignore the guidelines on reporting suicide issued by the Samaritans.

These call, among other things, for great care to be
exercised on details about how a person ended their life, precisely because
readers who are themselves in a vulnerable situation can be influenced to copy
a sensationally-reported suicide.

But sensation boost sales and sales matter more than
human beings when it comes to the tabloids.

Point six of
the National Union of Journalists’ Code
of Conduct says that a journalist “does nothing to intrude into anybody’s
private life, grief or distress unless justified by overriding consideration of
the public interest”.

That’s the
biggie, isn’t it: what is ‘the public interest’?

What was in
the public interest that justified seeing Jagger’s reaction to the death of a
loved one?

What was in
the public interest that justifies the additional pain being inflicted on
Williams’s family, and the potential danger to other vulnerable people caused
by the nature of the reporting?

Here’s a
clue: there is none.

The
apologists can whine all they like that the public interest is what the public
is interested in, but this is nonsense.

Let’s look at
an example of ‘the public interest’.

Some years
ago, during John Major’s time as Prime Minister, with a government set on
promoting ‘family values’, a junior minister called Tim Yeo stood up at the
Conservative Party annual conference and made a speech lambasting single
mothers as the biggest problem of the day.

A couple of
months later, it was revealed (in the News
of the World) that he had been having an affair himself, and was the father
of a child to a single woman. He resigned.

Here was a member
of a government that was promoting one thing to the public, and condemning
those who didn’t behave as it wanted, who included members who were themselves behaving
in the same way.

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London-based journalist, writer, photographer and artist, with one Other Half and three cats.
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